Watch this amazing commercial and then come back for the context.
We've all seen our share of pharmaceutical commercials. People skipping through fields, happy and healthy. Regulations prevent us from getting too specific about how the drug works, but we can't use that as an excuse for making mediocre commercials that waste air time and sometimes even alienate consumers. I feel we are not connecting enough with the consumer on an emotional level. We're leaving a gigantic opportunity on the table and our brands are suffering for it.
In most drug commercials you quickly know you are watching actors playing a role in front of the camera. The actors are just too perfect. They wear stylish clothes that are clean and pressed. They look like they just came from the salon. Their houses are immaculate. They are antiquing and canoeing and cooking and dancing and gardening. They are blissfully happy thanks to a breakthrough medication. Unfortunately, there's no emotional connection to the message. Therefore, the response is weaker than it should be and the company makes up for it by running more commercial spots. It's the brute force approach. Just get the branding out there and move product.
Consumers write off these commercials as fantasy. In the real world, we deal with pain and loss and uncertainty and hopelessness when we have a medical condition. And fear. I've never seen fear used seriously and effectively in a drug commercial, have you?
The problem is, most commercials only cover the end of the story. They don't cover the embarrassment and shame a couple may go through when they are having trouble physically in the boudoir. They don't show people suffering with COPD or diabetes, and reveal in real terms what it means to their lives. Sometimes they employ humor to avoid the real emotions associated with the condition.
Companies want to gloss over the problem, get right to the solution, and pitch you on how you can be happy again. But they miss the most crucial part of the story. People have to identify with the bad stuff before they can really get on board with the good stuff. Show you can relate to them before you offer them hope.
Take a look at this commercial if you haven't yet, and see a great example of how to tell the whole story. It's not a drug commercial, but I feel it appropriately demonstrates how emotion is a powerful force in reaching people. More powerful than money. More powerful than logic. So why is honest emotion so poorly executed in almost all of our commercials? That's the billion dollar question.
Yes, the example commercial is a bit long at 3 minutes. However, infomercials are 30 minutes long, and they run day and night, raking in billions for their companies. So length is not the problem, and budget is certainly not the problem. It's the fear of exposing the dark side of the condition, and all the anxiety and sadness that comes with it. That's why all we see is manufactured "Authenticity." It's a real miss by the advertising folks.
I think there is a place for story-heavy, long format commercials in the pharmaceutical industry. There's certainly a need for more authentic, emotional spots of any length. Do you agree?
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5 comments:
The problem with most DTC advertising is not just a lack of emotional connection, it's the whole substance of the dialogue with the consumer. We take products that are miracles of science with a quarter of a billion dollars or more worth of research and clinical development behind them, and then talk about them like a second-grade teacher explains where babies come from to an elementary school student. Emotion is good. It suggests that the marketer understands where the product fits in the patient's life and is able to render that in engaging and compelling terms, but it's not the only answer. With a strong value concept many things are possible. Without one you get the couple dancing on the beach.
mmclinden - Great points. Another missing opportunity is that drug companies could feature the people behind the making of a drug. Most pharma companies are faceless to consumers. Change that. The message could be "It took over $800 million and 5 years of hard work by hundreds of our people, but we persevered to bring you DrugName to relieve/cure your disease/condition. At DrugCo, we've got your back."
Interesting perspective. In Chicago, we are inundated with ads from Cancer Treatment Centers of America which use emotion quite effectively. This approach merits testing by pharma. I wonder if there is some regulatory inhibition at work?
Emotion at its best: Embrace Life: http://youtu.be/h-8PBx7isoM
People don't want to hear about you; they want to hear about themselves. Yes, they know the perfect people are not them. However, they have, for the most part, zero interest in the sausage-making of R&D and the media-fueled hostility toward big pharma also supports a value-oriented approach. For years? decades? I have argued that we inadequately convey the relative stakes of any given health care decision in DTC/P; thus allergy med choices are conveyed with the same faux gravitas as those about antiplatelet agents and so on. The consumer may not know the science or disease states, but s/he knows intuitively that stakes and commitment times differ in health care as anywhere else and thus it is very easy and often necessary to tune out stimuli that don't seem to recognize that.
Also, while it is always tempting to conflate emotion with authenticity, they are not the same construct. What we want to present is a value prop in an authentic context to the audience(s) that will most benefit. If/how emotion is infused in a real-world context, it may help drive optimal outcomes. However, in the allergy example, whipping up an emotional connection, so-called, is not only a waste of time but impairs sensitivity to more high-stakes decision-making -- an unseen cost of DTC/P.
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